Why North Korea's Strongman Kim Jong-un Is Emerging From Isolation

This picture from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency taken and released on January 1, 2018 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un delivering a New Year's speech. (AFP/Getty Images)

The two Koreas, bitter rivals since the 1950s, are scoping out ways to talk after a year of dangerously rising military tension. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un proposed in a New Year’s message that the two governments start right away formal talks that would cover at least Kim’s wish to send a North Korean team to the winter Olympics scheduled in the south next month.

The 35-year-old man normally keeps to himself except on the dozen or two occasions in 2017 when his government tested missiles that freaked out Japan and Washington. The reclusive, totalitarian and impoverished country otherwise does its own thing. It's shunned by much of the world and aided largely by one ally, China. So here's why Kim is toying with a break from isolation:

Pyongyang needs an economic lift

Kim genuinely wants the two sides to meet as long as his issues play high on the agenda, says Charles Morrison a senior scholar with the East-West Center think tank in Honolulu. South Korea was already waiting on an offer half a year ago for an inter-Korean dialogue on defense and cross-border family visits, the Yonhap news agency in Seoul says, a signal that its side wants to talk as well.

Each Korea has claimed the other since their war of the 1950s. South Korea advocates step-by-step unification with the north, Yonhap says.

“(Pyongyang) cannot move Washington or Tokyo, so Seoul is the softer alternative at this point,” Morrison says, referring to hostilities from other two countries most visibly upset about the North Korean military buildup.

Kim may be feeling the pinch of economic sanctions, too, says Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha University in Seoul. Sanctions approved by the United Nations Security Council in September include bans on selling natural gas and buying textile exports, direct hits at the $28.5 billion North Korean GDP.

North Korea will ask for a “relaxation” of sanctions, investment in stalled inter-Korean projects and “significant” reductions in U.S.-South Korea military exercises, Easley says.

Projects such as the South Korean-invested Kaesong Industrial Complex that closed in 2016, would bring the north economic benefits that might offset the pain of sanctions.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, though a fan of dialogue as a way to ease public anxiety, would make concessions only if the north scaled back weapons development, scholars expect.

“Confidence building is good, talks could be good, but what would not be good is giving the Kim regime anything for free or legitimizing its nuclear and missile programs,” Easley says. “None of those measures should be considered unless North Korea halts its nuclear and missile tests, and recommits to denuclearization according to U.N. Security Council resolutions and previous multilateral agreements.”

Second, Kim’s emergence will make the Korean Peninsula safer

North Korea might keep building up intercontinental ballistic missiles powerful enough to hit the continental United States in addition to a hydrogen bomb program, especially if any talks with the south don’t work out.

But as long as Kim thinks he can get something from the negotiations, his government might test weaponry less often this year than last as those launches upset neighbors including Seoul -- which in turn can double down on sanctions. The final quarter of 2017 already saw a stop to high-visibility missile tests that became so frequent early in the year that U.S. President Donald Trump made his opposition to them a core of his Asia policy.

“Seoul is anxious for talks to reduce tensions, and will happily seek more symbolic ways of reducing them,” Morrison says. It would agree to cross-border visits among families split between the two sides since the 1950s and a cut in military exercises with Washington -- up to a point -- he suggests. Seoul might kick in humanitarian aid, as well.

“But (South Korea) is not about to bargain away its ultimate security guarantees or the U.S. alliance,” he says.